Linux has surpassed 5% desktop market share in the US (5.03% in June 2025), per StatCounter, driven by privacy concerns, rising costs of Windows/macOS, and user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. Community celebrates amid gaming and enterprise boosts, though challenges like software gaps persist; analysts eye 7% by 2027.
It’s almost certainly much higher than that
First of all, ChromeOS is Linux. It’s a weird Linux, but it is Linux and can be made to run regular Linux software. It’s based on Gentoo. It’s not just “technically” Linux; it just straight up is. It’s even more Linux than Android is.
That adds another 2.69% up to 7.69%
But also, the 4.77% Unknown is almost certainly made up of primarily Linux machines.
So really, it’s a range of percentages anywhere from 7.69% to 12.46%. I would guess Linux users are at least 10% of the US market now
Source: The StatCounter pages the article is referring to for US: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america
World wide is also similar: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/
There we’re potentially even higher: 5.33% to 14.5%. That’s just shy of the worldwide Mac users! macOS + OS X is 15.35% worldwide.